<nettime> DDS developments

[Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>]

     [via <tbyfield@panix.com>. Orig To: dds@bagheera.xs4all.nl; 
      CC: redactie@netkwesties.nl, nettime-nl@nettime.org, 
      redactie@webwereld.nl, peter@planet.nl, mjk@xs4all.nl, 
      sladjana@parool.nl]

There is a new website out there: http://dds.provocation.net . All it 
contains is your web pages. The index page says this:

   DDS has been a sinking ship for a long time, and the end seems to 
   be getting closer. In a last effort to save it, the Vereniging 
   Open Domein was founded and started negotiating with Joost Flint. 
   Unfortunately, not much seems to come out of those - by now secret - 
   negotiations, and time is running out.

   One thing is very clear though: Joost Flint and Chris Göbel smell 
   money in the users that their BV got for free from the earlier DDS, 
   so they are not going to let go easily. Thus, no meaningful 
   negotiations can take place unless those users lose their commercial 
   value. Luckily, the latter is a rather simple process, the beginning 
   of which you are now looking at.

   As a first step, I have mirrored most of the 900+ currently public 
   user home pages in the state they were in on April 16, 2001 (Flint 
   says there are another 12.000 pages "somewhere", but if they're not 
   public they're not at all. The same goes for Flint's claims about 
   the total number of registered users). Anyway, if you are a DDS user 
   and you are asked for money in order to keep your website, don't 
   bother paying; your website is staying up anyway, for free. Within 
   a few days you will also have FTP access to it so that you can 
   keep updating it (or can delete it if you object to the mirror).

   Step two will be to offer all current DDS users new e-mail 
   addresses on a final domain (provocation.net is just an interim 
   solution). Since the DDS user database mysteriously escaped from 
   its cage, this is just a matter of configuring a server and 
   getting some more bandwidth. The progress will be announced here.

   Step three will take more time; it entails building a new front 
   to the aforementioned and making a good-looking and well-functioning 
   service out of it. The classical DDS design is probably Flint's 
   copyright by now, so probably it can't be used. A new design takes 
   time and so does the writing and testing of all the scripts that 
   are needed for a smooth service.

   By the way, if you own stock in Scarlet, you might start thinking 
   about selling it right now. Scarlet is buying DDS from Flint, which 
   says a lot about Scarlet's risk assessment policies - or absence 
   thereof. On the other hand, Scarlet stock could give you the kicks 
   that Russian roulette can't give you any more. You might actually 
   want to buy instead. Your choice, your fun.

   Ambitious plans, huh? Perhaps not. I operate alone, of my own 
   initiative and with small means. I am not hampered by bureaucracy, 
   weird agreements with Flint or bickering members, but can put my 
   efforts into something productive. It might turn out that this is 
   the best way to get something done. If not, nothing will have been 
   lost except some of my time. In any case, wish me luck.


You should visit http://dds.provocation.net and follow the links there; 
they are much more informative than this mail. 


ExecSum:

Your website [whatever].dds.nl/~user can now be found as well at 
http://dds.provocation.net/~user . This is a free service. You 
don't need to do anything to maintain it. This website is 
completely independent of your site at DDS.

If you would rather have your website removed from this mirror, 
just mail oracle@xs4all.nl **from your @dds account** and ask me 
to remove it. Before doing so I will ask you to reply to a mail, 
just to make sure that nobody is asking me to delete somebody 
else's website. 

In the beginning of next week you will have FTP access to your 
website and you will be able to modify it yourself. 

You should not announce your new website publicly yet, nor start 
indexing it with search engines. dds.provocation.net is only a 
temporary home. The pages will be moved to a shorter (and less 
glamorous :) .nl domain sometime next week. When that has been 
done, you can, if you want, submit your site to search engines 
and put redirects on your dds pages.

*

Also, as you probably have noticed, you have been subscribed to 
a mailing list (listserver courtesy of Karin Spaink). Subscribers 
to the list are for now the DDS users whose pages have been 
mirrored, some people at opendomein and - obviously - Joost Flint. 
Subscribing you to a mailing list without asking is very close to 
bad netiquette, but sending out several hundreds of BCCs is not 
any better. Somehow I need to inform you about this before you 
read about it in the press. If you want off the list, just send 
a mail to 
   listserv@bagheera.xs4all.nl 
with 
   unsubscribe dds your@e-mail.address
in the body of the message. I.e. something like this: 

===
From:     me@dds.nl
To:       listserv@bagheera.xs4all.nl 
Subject:  whatever

 unsubscribe dds me@dds.nl
===


I sincerly hope that we will all enjoy the developments on the 
subject, on this list. If you would like to contribute in any 
way to the future free and Flint-BV-free DDS, mail me privately. 
And do join opendomein.nl . I have made a lot of nasty remarks 
about opendomein so far, but at least they embrace all the old 
DDS priniples. With a few kicks from the membership they could 
turn into an organisation that is both idealistic and commercially 
efficient at the same time, as JF would say :)

Z


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